RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS
Nika Sings
She was only seventeen
A world yet to explore
Killed by Iranian agents
Who wanted to even the score
The price to pay for protest
In Iran can be severe
To the agents she was a threat
To her family she was dear
Nika Shakarami sang
In her shy but courageous way
So they decided to silence her
Yet her voice is heard today
When will these leaders learn
You cannot lead by brute force
Instead of creating martyrs
You should plot a different course
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: LIFE SONGS
War and Peace
A soldier’s duty is survival
When he marches off to war
She is not to ask questions
What are we fighting for?
A soldier is but a pawn
She does what she is told
He is not to follow instincts
She is never to be bold
When a soldier becomes a hero
It is often to save face
The commander gave an order
The wrong time or place
All soldiers are courageous
Just to do what they must do
Just to be where they must be
Is an act of courage too
It is better to be raised in peace
Than to be praised in war
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: UKRAINE
Conscripts and Mercenaries
When Putin calls you to war
Consider all your choices
Hear the righteous people roar
Listen closely to their voices
If you simply can’t abide
Join the other side
If they make you carry arms
Do your duty well
Swear to do no harm
Or spend your time in jail
If you simply can’t abide
Join the other side
Fight to free Ukraine
Fight to free your mind
This cursed war for the insane
Has caught you in a bind
If you simply can’t abide
Take your family and hide
Or let your conscience
Be your guide
Join the other side
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: UKRAINE
Saboteur
The beast of the great white north
Opens a new front in the war on democracy
Sabotaging gas lines in the Black Sea
Supplying Europe with energy
Meantime in the Czech Republic
Putin finances the opposition party
Sponsors protests in the streets
In Italy he throws a party for Mussolini
Scoring a victory for fascists and
Putin sympathizers everywhere
Though they pretend to oppose
The war in Ukraine (for now)
He believes he can defeat democracy
With corruption and propaganda
The weakest among us que up
To take his blood-for-oil money
To utilize his machine
Hold the line in Bohemia
Remember your history
The Velvet Revolution
Remember Dubcek and Havel
Russian tanks on the streets of Prague
Remember the occupation
A broken nation in defeat
Hold the line in Milan
Remember your history
How you lost your righteous way
How you followed Mussolini
How it ended in disgrace
Hold the line in eastern Ukraine
Remember occupied France
The shame of those who submitted
The honor of those who made a stance
The great aggressor is losing ground
His debt is mounting every day
His cause is evil and corrupt
And for his crimes he will pay
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: UKRAINE
Voting in a War Zone
Imagine your home invaded by armed thugs
Miraculously you fight them back
But they hold the living room
With guns drawn they insist on a vote
To decide who will inhabit this space
Vote for them and life goes on
Until they deny you passage through
Your own living room
Vote against them and they open fire
This is what Russia did in Crimea
This in what they have done in Luhansk,
Kherson, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia
Voting in a war zone is not democracy
It is the opposite of democracy
It is itself a crime against humanity
It makes a mockery of democracy
Just as the Russian Federation does
With its mock elections
Voting with a gun to your head is not voting
Voting with a gun to your head is survival
Why would a dictator conduct such mockery?
It reveals his weakness and foreshadows
The depravity to come
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL DEMOCRACY
Fascism with a Pretty Face
Mussolini rose to power in Italy
As an elected prime minister in 1922
In three years he became dictator
In 1940 he entered the great war
On the side of the Nazis
Five years later he was captured
And executed by his own people
Five decades later
In the tradition of Italian fascism
Italy elects Giorgia “Mussolini” Meloni
Fascism with a pretty face
She represents Italian nationalism
Praises Mussolini
Condemns multiculturalism
Shows sympathy for Nazi collaborators
And repressive morality police
Despite past support for Putin
She has promised to support Ukraine
We will see, we will see
Would Mussolini have opposed Hitler
If his election required it?
Let’s not pretend it cannot happen
It can and anywhere
Where fear of others supplants patriotism
Where racial purity a silent virtue
Where years of austerity
Poverty and homelessness
Feed our biases and terror
It happens when we forget who we are
And what we stand for
It happens when we care only for
Ourselves and nothing for others
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: UKRAINE
Nuclear Threat
A poker player does not show his ace
A chess master does not tip his moves
A commander does not reveal his strategy
A leader does not threaten nuclear war
Unless he is desperate and cornered
The pariah of the new world order
Has raised the specter of annihilation
Mutually assured mass destruction
He has evolved from a toothless beast
To a madman in a collapsing kingdom
He is no longer the Russian strongman
He is no longer the untouchable leader
His veil of invincibility has shattered
The myth of his mighty military gone
He has ruled in an age of his own demise
He has guided his ship into the rocks
He has led the great regression
Away from freedom and democracy
Toward dictatorship and greed
His story is already written
His legacy is a toppled statue
The once great commander of the north
Has fallen in disgrace
The question now is:
Will the Russian people follow
His path to self-destruction
Or will they rise to the moment?
(Note: The people are rising; the question
Now is what will the military do?)
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL POLITICS
Britannia
Beneath the glory of the pageantry
Beneath the sorrow and the mourning
The decline of Britannia presses on
As they christen an age of austerity
With a new conservative prime minister
The Brits will double down on Brexit
While they renew their pledge to NATO
And the war against Russia in Ukraine
Their pledge to war on inflation
Runs contrary to the war on warming
And threatens to crack the alliance
The world is once again divided
The free world against the oppressed
The abusers against the abused
The exploiters against the exploited
There are nations committed to change
And nations determined to regress
At a time of catastrophic disasters
There are nations that do not care
There are nations that see the world
And those that see only themselves
Britannia is at a crossroads
Which way will you go?
Will you hold with the civilized world
Or will you choose to walk alone?
Either way there will be sacrifice
Either way there will be blood
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING
The Warnings
We should have known
We had more warnings than we can count
We should have known when Katrina
Filled the Gulf of Mexico before
Leaving the ninth ward a ghost town
We should have known
We should have known when torrential
Floods ravaged India and Pakistan
When Hurricane Rita slammed into Cuba,
Texas and Louisiana
When Ivan brought havoc to Venezuela,
The Gulf Coast and the Caribbean
We should have known when Ike
Ran its course from Texas to Iceland
When Sandy buried New Jersey in floodwater
When Harvey made waste from
The Yucatan to Texas
We should have known
Tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons
Storms the size of continents
Glaciers falling into the oceans
Polar icecaps melting
Islands swallowed by the sea
No one can say we were not warned
No one can say we didn’t see it coming
We saw, we knew and we turned away
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL JUSTICE
The Martyrdom of Mahsa Amini
Mahsa Amini was arrested in Tehran
By the Iranian morality police
On the charge of not covering her head
To the satisfaction of her oppressors
Mahsa Amini died that day
The authorities said she fell ill
Her family said there was no illness
The authorities said it was a heart attack
The family says she was healthy
The authorities say it is unfortunate
Her family says it is a crime against humanity
It is a crime against all women
It is a crime against the women of Iran
And the brave women of Iran agree
The people of Iran have taken to the streets
Risking their lives in protest
Five brave souls have fallen
Yet the morality police march on
It is not the first time
It will not be the last
But this time as every time
Iran displays its brutality
It becomes weaker
Mahsa Amini is a martyr
She did not want to be
May her family take comfort in
Knowing she will win in the end
No matter how long it takes
No matter how many suffer
And her name will outlive them all
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: UKRAINE
Putin’s Payroll
“Putin isn’t losing the war in Ukraine;
He’s winning the war!”
Tucker Carlson
Remember Glenn Greenwald?
That stalwart defender of free speech
Journalistic freedom
Freedom of thought and expression
A voice against the war in Iraq
A voice against the war in Afghanistan
Who lost his voice on the war in Ukraine
Remember Tulsi Gabbard
She ran against the war on terror
Spoke out against American imperialism
Campaigned on a policy of peace
Condemned our invasion of Iraq
But found no fault with Putin’s
Invasion of Ukraine
Remember Tucker Carlson
When Fox News was a cheerleader
For all American wars?
Now he gets his talking points
Straight from the Kremlin by way of
One America News and Russia Today
Russia is losing the war in Ukraine
On the battlefield and in the forum
Of international discourse
Defending Russia’s imperial policy
After opposing American interventions
Is a classic hypocrite’s creed
And proof positive that the defender
Is on Putin’s Payroll
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: GLOBAL WARMING
The War on Warming
As Alaska is battered by typhoon
And Puerto Rico is slammed by hurricane
The harshest storms in history
Blasting wind and pounding rain
The war on warming goes in retreat
Like an old war fought in vain
Floods droughts and heat waves
The Russian war against Ukraine
The certainty of a hard winter
Who is first to break the chain?
As Russia cuts off Europe
From the Netherlands to Spain
The change cannot come fast enough
To alleviate the pain
Erdogan joins the Chinese
In a walk down authoritarian lane
Even Germany must be tempted
A betrayal that would stain
All this because one brutal man
Keeps driving the Cold War train
He cannot accept his dismal error
The invasion of Ukraine
RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
Collective Delusion
I once believed in childish things
Like waking up with angel’s wings
When I grew up I put them away
In a box of dreams and there they stay
I still believe there are aliens in space
Who may have visited the human race
But I don’t believe in wacky theories
And I must admit it makes me weary
When I hear about a guy named Q
Who will tell us all just what to do
To win our country back again
From a dark and evil force of sin
That some folks call democracy
We’re better off with autocracy
One man to rule over all of us
One driver for the nation’s bus
No longer will we have to vote
We’ll all go down in the same boat
God bless collective delusions
An end to all the confusion
One god, one nation, one mind
The very best of humankind
God bless our dearest leader
Our mass delusion feeder
I pledge allegiance to the best
To hell with all the rest
God bless the American nation
Immigrants by invitation
Only
